Memories are fun, but faulty . . . Feel free to add your blur in the comments if you were there!

Rocky Horror in Senekal, Vrystaat

1971: Rugby in Bloemfontein, Springboks vs the Frogs.
After the game, Tabs, Des, Raz, Stervis and I are driving back when the kroeg – no way you could call it a pub – in Senekal beckoned.
By the time the barman threw us out Des had bonded deeply with one of Senekal’s left-behinds and when we suggested we leave for home rather than go home with Deliverance for a braai, Des told us in no uncertain terms that WE could go but HE was not leaving his lifelong mate, of three hours, in the lurch.

ONE fing we must NOT do, we were told, also in no uncertain terms, when we got to the small house on the wrong side of Senekal, is wake his wife. Lemme tell you carefully, you must not, no marrer whut you do, wake my wahf, you hear?

Wooden floors, five drunk ous stumbling around, I started to think this goon doesn’t actually have a wife. Conan meanwhile, is scratching around in the chest deep freeze. He hauls out what looks like a roundish, rock-hard lump of blood in a plastic checkers packet, and suddenly I get a clear image: He DOES have a wife and she IS in the house! In that deep freeze! In fact, he’e offering us a piece of her for a braai!

Des, I urge, we should go, this is going to take forever. But it’s like Des told us: WE can go, but HE’s not leaving his lifelong mate.

It’s midnight in June in Senekal, Vrystaat. It’s not hot. Eventually a fire gets going – sort of – and the icy red lump piece of deceased wife sits on it, refusing to melt. An alternative hazy recollection is the oven was turned on and the lump placed in there. Exact facts are in dispute among us hostages decades later.

Meantime, Jack Nicholson has found some dop and we have to drink, and luckily this puts him to sleep and mellows the Glutz so we’re able to persuade him to make a bolt for it, hitting the Senekal dirt roads till we find the tar to Harrismith. Stervis has a better hazy recollection of the Wildman pulling out a gun and taking potshots at us as the getaway car spins madly down the driveway. Luckily the resulting dust plume obscures us from view and saves our lives.

Bliksem!

To this day I can experience that weird, out-of-body sensation of “WTF are we DOING here? Am I in a bad movie or in a bad dream?!”